The Weekly D.C. Power List*: Hill Staffer Edition

Why the asterisk? Everyone in Washington thinks about power, but everyone in Washington thinks about power differently. As part of the preparation for the GQ DC Power List, our Woman in Washington will survey different DC subgroups, finding out who they think of as powerful, and why. We're starting with Hill Staffers, a group right in the middle of DC's current power struggle. Next week she'll talk to the people who help create the illusion of power: The folks who book Washingtonians on cable television. Have ideas for who else in the Capitol should get to weigh in? Maitre d's? Editors? Cabbies? Let us know in the comments.
A successful lobbyist might not find a Congressman that intimidating, a journalist may grovel at the feet of a scheduler—if a person can keep you from getting what you want, that person has power. So it should come as no surprise that when GQ's Woman in Washington surveyed staffers in the House and Senate, Mitch McConnell emerged at Hill staffers' consensus choice as the Most Powerful Person in Washington.

Democrats complained, Republicans crowed, but they agreed: The Senate minority leader's wrangling of opposition to health care reform legislation means that he, not, say, the leader of the majority party, rules the roost. "He runs Congress, right?" One Democrat Senate staffer moaned: "Having been in the minority, as much as I love Tom Daschle, he didn't run the Senate when we were in the minority." Democrats and Republicans admire how McConnell has kept his "super-minority" "unified and enthused." Another Senate Democrat staffer makes clear that it's not perceived as a team effort: "Boehner and Cantor are good on television but they can get jackshit stopped... McConnell can get things stopped." A Republican Senate staffer describes his technique as "forcing Democrats to do things people don't like" and drawing attention to them. "Everything he's set his sights on—health care, Guantanamo, the budget—has turned bad for them after he started talking about it." Speculates a Republican House staffer: "He could be effectively picking the Republican nominee for 2012, after November he'll have that kind of juice."

RUNNER UP: The Senate parliamentarian. Multiple nominations, none by name (it's Alan Frumin), for the rule-interpreter that will decide the fate of reconciliation for health care legislation.

Other nominees:

#3 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "By far the most competent member of the administration... I happened to see her testify and she's smart, competent, grace under fire—the whole package."—House Republican staffer

#4 Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): "By dint of his ability to bring people together, pushing for solution. It's not that he's adverse to a soundbite, but they do more than a typical soundbite... they challenge people to say 'why aren't you at the table, working with us?'"—House Democrat staffer

#5 Mike Allen, Chief Political Correspondent, Politico.com: "The James Brown of DC journalism—no one works harder. He is the one who delivers the news to anyone who wakes up and reaches for their blackberry rather than a newspaper."—Senate Republican staffer

#6 Doug Elmendorf, Director of the Congressional Budget Office: "Nothing happens in congress without a CBO score, so he has a lot of influence ... you could count the number of members on two hands who actually know him"—and no one nominating him spelled his name correctly—"and yet he influences every piece of legalization that comes to the floor."—House Republican staffer